


If the Heavens Ever Did Speak

by o0SongAndSilence0o



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: #SorryNotSorry, Abuse, Actually maybe I am, Companions, F/M, Gen, I'm hurting these guys alot, It's going to happen alot in this, Major Character Injury, Major character death - Freeform, Slavery, accidental suicide, lots of pain, seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-08-21 20:54:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8260204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o0SongAndSilence0o/pseuds/o0SongAndSilence0o
Summary: The worst possible outcomes (what I think, anyway) for all* of the Dragon Age companions. (*Only ones missing are Shale, Bethany, and Josephine)These are really hurting me to write. Some of it feels so dark and I want to scoop these characters up and hold them. Especially a certain few..those will be rough. Anyway, if you want someone to blame, alot of this was soundboarded off of dreabean ...which probably doesn't surprise some people.





	1. So You Run on Gasoline

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreabean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreabean/gifts).



> Song Companion: [Gasoline by Halsey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRHNi3QfFlE)

Here...of all places, it seemed fitting enough to come back to. Ruined and broken as it was, it...it meant something. Vigil’s Keep was where all of this started, or ended, depending on how you looked at it all. 

Bending down to one knee outside where the large wooden doors to the main hall once stood, I brush my fingertips in the layers of dust on the overgrown stone. Once, some years ago, my footsteps and those of comrades touched them, and there were fires lit to be seen for miles; talking and frantic merriment from inside. It had been short lived, but oh had it been wonderful while it lasted. Yet another choice that I’ve carried with me. Another regret?   
  
The Chantry had been a decision that had required weeks of planning. Days, even, leading up to it that I’d needed to steel myself for. And I’d been  _ so _ sure. So very sure that it was the only way to make a statement the way I needed to...the only way to  _ really _ show them. 

  
  
_ “Just...go.” _ __  
__  
The memory, her voice...it cut deep into a part of me that at this point I’d give anything to make it not exist. But I don’t really mean that. It was the only real happiness I can remember. Hawke hadn’t even been able to meet my eyes before turning away. If...if she had, I know it would have been me to look away. It was, perhaps, my first true experience with shame.    
  
What now? As always, I’ve barely thought two steps ahead and am again left scrambling for the next one. If only that was was only character flaw, perhaps so much of this wouldn’t have come to pass. Has it really been this long? Ten years since the bittersweet victory in Amaranthine. There were innocent, good people lost in the Keep that day, friends among them. How good men like Nathaniel had been lost, but I pull through seems another cruel joke. 

But what room do I have to judge?

 

The resulting laugh at the thought is startling in all of the silence. I’ve murdered, betrayed friends and loved ones, acted purely on selfish gain under the guise of...something that no longer held any definition. We could have had something, Hawke and I. Edged out the rest of our days in the manor and perhaps even have children one day. Vengeance sated for now, it’s strange to be able to think this clearly. I’ve gone too far... 

Enough of that. Guilt really is a crippling thing, in the end. It had taken weeks to reach Ferelden again after parting from a band of mages who had taken me in. Well, the latest one anyway. I never stayed anywhere long, and tried to keep my head down all the same. Despite fighting Vengeance daily on it, I insisted to only treat wounded. But more recently, a strange feeling has taken hold of me, like the tugging of a heavy, iron chain. The music, drilling through my brain with the precision of a deft surgeon. I knew what this was, and I had to come back here just once more before the Calling takes me.

  
Just over a decade, there would be nothing left if unearthed but bone. We had come to this arrangement after the Warden from Orlais had departed, and maybe I would like to believe the intense desperation from my friend was what convinced me to allow it. Unfortunately, it was a simple case of human greed for power. Something to kick myself over, at the very least.

 

An empty body, you’d think I’d have expected it, but seeing the rotting corpse just drop like that was shocking. And I wasn’t going to just leave him there. The well was destroyed in the siege anyway, so putting the used up body in there seemed logical enough. Not like there was anyone who would be bothered by it.

  
Turning back to look at the crumbled pile of stone, I approached it and slid my hand over to soft moss. It was a goodbye. The Justice I knew died here in Vigil’s Keep. My bitterness, my defiance...it had warped him into what was feared most about mages. The potential for corruption.

There were rumors of other Wardens gathering in Adamant. Birds of a feather and all that.

  
**_-Bloodstained Journal Pages found on the body of a Templar in the Western Approach_ **   



	2. Roles Have Changed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Companion: [Hurt by Get Scared](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2QF50yJx2k)

I knew who it was, even through the flashes of the lightning hitting the sand. It left patches of glass where it struck. Maybe to someone else, it could have been seen as beautiful. As far as I care, beauty and Hawke couldn’t share the same breath.

I watched as she and her new friends struck down the men Danarius sent with me. To have come across her though...I’d like to think it was coincidence, but of course he knew. Even now, he oh so loved to throw my stint of rebellion in my face. Seeing her from my place on an overlooking rock, and as I turned the medallion over between my fingers, I remembered the last time we’d spoken. 

“If you want him, he’s yours” Strange how can recall her voice, right down to the dismissive tone, after four years. And that abomination’s snide approval of it...I could feel the amulet cutting into my palm, but that mattered very little in comparison.

She tore through the soldiers like they were made of parchment. Not surprising. She had always been a rather capable woman, for a mage. Stepping down from the ledge above them to approach the group from behind, a break from stealth revealed a second familiar face. Of course the dwarf would be with her. He saw me first, and the shock was enough satisfaction, even without it fading to look as though I’d kicked him. 

“Impressive as always, Hawke.” I spat, toe nudging up a leg of one of my fallen Venatori soldiers. She whirled around, staff clattering to the ground when her eyes met mine. Good. I cared little for the others with her. Perhaps that made me the only person who didn’t give a damn about this ‘Herald’.

“Fe-” I cut her off with a raised hand. How dare she.

“You have no right to say my name.” Looking again at her surrounding allies, I could feel a sharp smirk cross my lips. “You seem to be doing well for yourself. I wonder,” giving a pause, I began moving towards her, the fury in my chest threatening to boil over and showing clearly as my markings began glowing brighter.

“A shame then, that no one you loved is around to see your success. You were too distracted to save your mother, and responsible for the deaths of your siblings? Oh. Lest I forget.”

At this, I threw the contents of my hand at her feet, the amulet resting on top of the sand. I’d been carrying it for weeks now, and perhaps it was not so strange for me to carry a Tevinter Chantry symbol, but this one wasn’t just any Chantry amulet. And she knew it.

She gaped and it was obvious how much her legs were shaking as she bent to pick it up. Did I kill him? No, though I wish I had. When I had arrived in the Approach, a band of templars were camped out in the dunes. They’d been talking of an apostate they’d killed. Over a shared meal, they pulled out ‘that ridiculous coat’. Oh the irony of it. They’d kept some of his possessions, the amulet among them. On impulses I only then, as I watched Hawke crying silently over the piece of metal, realized, I traded for it. 

She took everything from me. Turned her back on me when I needed her and the others most. Serves her right that it had been but her and the dwarf, so I heard, in the last stand to save Kirkwall. How could any of them have stood by her after selling me? 

The revenge was bittersweet, and not nearly as fulfilling as I’d expected. But it was enough to know that while I turned to leave, intent on Danarius scraping my memories clean...she would live with every ounce of pain she had earned


	3. Bury All the Memories We've Made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Companion: [Misery Loves My Company by Three Days Grace](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkSASi_eN_k)
> 
> Also, not quite sure why, but every time I post a new chapter, it changes the amount of chapters to ??. (ex/ 3/??) Ugh. There are 24.

I don’t recognize myself anymore…

 

All the more fitting that my reflection comes not from a mirror, but from the blood-smeared shield of a fallen guard. I brush red fingertips over my hair, pass them over my cheek. The resulting transfer of the blood to my skin was startling, adding to the dissociation. 

This was not the woman I had been seven years prior. She wasn’t conditioned against the world; wasn’t so alone. But now there are lines that mark my face from frowns so deep set that the muscles likely don’t know any other way to pull. Now my eyes are more grey than blue, as cold as the steel they resemble.

 

I had thought coming to Kirkwall with them would bring the clean slate I needed. To start over, to...grieve. But even after I had mourned him, even after I had maybe found someone who could fill that hole in my heart…   
  
The more I think of it, the more I see that all of this, not just my own loss, but  _ everything _ was her fault. She murdered my husband, elated in stirring chaos in a city I was struggling to protect, and as if none of that was enough, her abomination might have very well destroyed the world.

His face, the guard at my feet, it could have once been more familiar. Could have, perhaps, once smiled for me like Wesley did. I’d been foolish to think Hawke would have helped me achieve that. And that it took until now for me to see she had intentionally spurned me and my authority at every opportunity is no one's fault but my own.    


  
The others knew full well what she was. What she was capable of. I only heard of it afterwards, but I’d have  _ tried _ to stop it instead of stand there and watch as she sold one of what I’d assumed was her friend. Poor Fenris...Maker watch over you.

I wish I had died in Ferelden those years ago. To not have seen this madness come to pass. And after...she left. All but disappeared once Meredith fell. And who did that leave to restore order? Knight Commander, First Enchanter, and the Viscount dead, templars and mages slaughtering one another in the streets...yet again, Hawke was too selfish to see beyond herself.

 

Varric, at least, remained in Kirkwall following it all, for what he was worth. Though it seemed his worth measured more to a recent party that had arrived by ship yesterday. They seemed intimidating, at the least. Perhaps they were here to offer some sort of aid, though I doubt it. Kirkwall is lost. And the burden of responsibility rests on  _ her  _ shoulders.    


To walk through these streets, I can almost pretend that I see them as they once were. Small elven children playing about the tree in the alienage, shopkeepers leaning over their stalls to shout to potential customers. And maybe, if I were to walk into the Hanged Man, there would be Isabella and Varric telling stories over drinks. But one of them nearly cost the lives of everyone here once before, and the latter was being whisked away for reasons unknown. 

 

Nothing could ever be the same again...but would I even want it to? Was the ‘peace’ merely a prolonging of the inevitable? Of course it was. With Hawke here, it had always just been a matter of time.    


Which means that maybe, just maybe, I can put things right here at last. With that thorn in my side removed, I will make sure that Kirkwall recovers. No longer will I turn a blind eye to a friend who means well. I’ve seen just how dark that path can become...


	4. I'm Falling Faster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd had an order of how I'd post these, but this one has been sitting in a google doc, all finished, and that wasn't fair. To hell with the weird order, I'll reorganize them all once they're all done. So sorry!! 
> 
> Song Companion: [Fading Memories by Famous Last Words](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_nTIjrxkZ0)

I’d loved her first. Probably, anyway. All I knew was that in a single moment on a battlefield, my heart stilled the moment I saw her. And since then, even to now, my world spun for Estelle Lavellan.

 

There were times that I thought there could be something between us. Sometimes in a smile or a gesture, I imagined more than just friendly kindness or concern. When she came to me and acted as the voice of reason I needed to be able to quit using the lyrium, I found strength in her. And again, foolish as I was, believed that her care was as deep as I wanted it to be. And I could even imagine this for a while.

 

Until she’d look at  _ him _ .

 

No one had ever understood what it was that caused icy shivers to cross the spines of those unfortunate enough to bear the company of Solas. Dare I even still call him that? Fen’harel. Trickster, traitor...No, there was a reason that was more appropriate. 

 

I’d even remained by her side when he abandoned her, disappearing without a word for two years. Maker’s grace she was so strong. Broken by Solas’ leaving, she’d mourned the loss but a few days before finding purchase on her feet once more.

 

It was still a period of time where, if not prompted, Estelle did not eat, she refused to sleep...It was why I insisted on remaining near her. I know it was selfish; I need no one to explain it to me. His absence meant I could possibly have a chance, once she’d healed from it. Indeed, it gave that to me, as short-lived and hollow as it was.

 

After the period of pure dependence, it became entirely too clear that my company was a method of patching an empty hole I’d never be able to fill. That for all the nights I closed my eyes to her held tightly to my chest, for every tear I kissed from her cheeks...I’d never be what she wanted. 

 

And that’s how, for two years, I forced myself to believe that maybe she loved me after all. 

 

As delusions were want to, it didn’t last. Being summoned to Orlais, I knew, marked the end of the careful and fragile connection I had built with her. Everyone, up until then, had walked on glass doing their best not to mention the aftermath of the victory against Corypheus. It had taken very few instances of watching the ashen tone return to Estelle’s face before it was understood that it was simply not a topic to bring up. 

 

If there had been some way, anything, that I could have done to prevent her from attending the Council, I’d have done it instantly, consequences be damned. Luckily, if it could be put that way, she found more important things to be busied with while at the palace that stayed the trial. Oh, no, the Orlesians never would call it that, would they? Some things are painfully obvious, though, and the nature of their summons were too obvious to mistake as anything more pleasant. I think if just one of the pompous, powdered fools were to be straightforward and honest about even something as minor as what they had for breakfast, the speaker’s heart would stop.

 

Just like that, she was miles away and I was doing what I could to stay focused on tactics negotiations, signing off letters, and managing a job that used to take three of us. As much as Cassandra and I knew she wanted to help, Leliana’s attentions were required elsewhere now. If this had been the circumstances during the time before Corypheus’ defeat, I’d be drowning in rolls of maps and sealing wax within a week.

 

Updates, rumours, and general correspondence began worrying me as time went on. Mentions of the Fade, of more elven ruins...I wish I could speak for more than myself in saying that I am more than finished with anything bearing the descriptions of ‘old’ and ‘elven’.

 

It wasn’t until the end, until the others had pieced it together and warned me, that everything connected. Dread Wolf...later, once the stories were explained in depth, did the more subtle details fit in, but I knew enough.   
  
He was responsible.    
  
For far more, I’d realize, than initially thought. I’d ridden a cart horse lame, I do believe, but that only brought me so far. The end of the path ended in an ornate mirror, and with a glance to Varric who was seated on the steps near it, I knew she had gone inside.    
  
But what stepped through...was a horror I’d give anything to never have had come to pass.   
  
Robed in furs and glinting metal, the grand villain in my story as well as everyone else I’d learn, strode through, bearing what I found most precious in his arms. Not even in one piece could he return her, someone he’d claimed to care for and merely spat out at his own convenience. 

 

The arrogance. The sheer boldness of him to approach me and pass her on. I locked gaze with him then, hoping it spoke everything I could not voice. If I began, if I tried to ask if he was now finally finished with her, if he’d taken whatever he had left behind the last time, one of us would not have left still breathing.

 

An arm was his first obvious price. What else, I still do not know. I could not bear yet another ordeal of desperately trying to heal her, only to mean nothing in the end.    
  
Considering the alternative I chose, I’d give anything now to do so. A million times over, if necessary. I...went too far. I let my personal grief not only cloud, but destroy my better judgement. It hurts to write; the crystal coating on my fingers grinding into the surface of the table. To see her once more, I’d very much like that. But she could never see me like this. It would make the inevitable dying all the more painful. Somewhere along the lines of devouring every ounce of lyrium I could acquire, I found myself playing with its more destructive form. And it did help, for a while. The rush covered up the jagged wound in me, at least until the red began taking over like this.

 

I likely do not have much time left to me, and I apologize if you care little to hear of my tale of self-pity. And perhaps, even, it is harsh to assume you would understand. But from our brief interactions, Hawke, you have been through enough to potentially see some merit in my intentions. 

 

You’ve loved and lost before, though under other circumstances. I think I know now why it was so crippling to you. I’m glad, then, that you were stronger of character afterwards than I have been. I’d like to think when they eventually break the door down, that this will reach you. 

 

**_Cullen Rutherford_ **

 

It had been found open on the desk three days later. The tower he’d once called home had taken weeks to consider salvageable, what with even the gaps in the stoned dusted in tiny crystals of red lyrium. 

  
It had comforted Cassandra to know he’d at least passed in some relative peace. She kept the letter within a trunk in her quarters for years afterwards, telling herself that if Hawke were to ever find her way from the Fade, that then it would be passed on to its intended recipient. Until such a time, it proved a bitter reminder that the aftereffects of the Breach, and all that followed, would be felt for many days to come.


	5. Screaming "Just Let it Go"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Companion: [The Longing by Messenger Down](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vxLqOFD21c)
> 
> More notes at the bottom...

We had many adventures, he and I. From delving into the ruins of the deep roads, to the confirmation of my faith, the journey held many fond memories. Even the fearsome ones became sweeter with the years.

Somewhere in all of that, we’d fallen in love. Or...so I, at least, had thought. It wasn’t until after his sacrifice that I’d begun to wonder if it had actually been real. Perhaps too much read into the gentle touches at night, or a smile that hinted at such intimacy. Could they have truly meant nothing in his eyes?

I’d grieved, as did we all, after he was gone. Even sweet Alistair could not give his new subjects a genuine smile at his coronation; the expression forced and filled with the sadness that all of us carried. It was as though a piece of me had been taken away, leaving a great hole in the space my Warden once occupied. 

And that was the extent of it, for a time. The pain of losing a loved one was enough, by far. It seemed that the Maker was not finished punishing me, yet, though for what I still do not know. 

The rumors began as soft whispers, easily ignored and vague enough to push aside to worry more over the important matters. At one time Orlesian politics, another as Justinia’s Left Hand, bleeding before I knew it into aiding the Herald.

Herald. I wasn’t sure if I believed anymore. There was such doubt already, and granted I had strayed far from being a model example. Burying myself into work, those doubts and fears could be quieted.

Then she came back. All raven curls and wicked smile. An ambassador of all things; as though Morrigan knew anything of diplomacy. I’d have found myself pleasantly surprised at being wrong, had it not been for the companion she brought with her to Skyhold. 

A little boy, of about ten years of age.

I had not thought of those old rumors in so long, but upon seeing him they all flooded back in a deafening torrent. A pregnant apostate of my former companion’s description at an inn, or later described as having a toddler in tow. 

Of course I knew of the offer she made to the Warden. I also know he died there in Denerim instead of accepting it. What then, did this mean for the boy who had his thick eyelashes, and that characteristic quirk to his lips. And the faint point to the child’s ears could not be mistaken away for something else. 

And yet, there I sat in my tower nest, overlooking this boy playing in the garden far below me. Would if I could say I pitied the child, or to have forgiven his mother. The reality of it, I knew, had turned me away from the Maker entirely.

For what cruel god would take my love from me and then curse me to house his bastard? It was not as if Morrigan did not know I was here. Undoubtedly, she was gleeful in that knowledge. 

I had always thought he never came to see me for fear of saying goodbye. That perhaps doing so would have been too much. And to find out, a decade later, that the absence was from him choosing to spend his last night with her?

A part of me needed an explanation, to know for certain what all had happened. Innocent enough of a request, but one that my renewed heartache could not let me have.

If only I were able to feel the guilt in sealing the letter that would ensure that at least part of what I craved would be sated.

The child is only mortal after all.  
And once all of this is over, he will be answering to me in person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so something cool about this one. Yeah, yeah, some of you may be saying "What, but that's impossible in canon!"   
> Yeah. It's supposed to be. When I did my last playthrough, though, it happened. I'd set my Warden to have romanced Leliana, and was amused that Keep also let me select that my Warden had a human baby with Morrigan. I somehow didn't put two and two together until fast forward to after Halamshiral and I feel like SUCH. AN. ASSHOLE. It's a glitch, but in that glitchy world, Leliana had to put up with this madness. I still feel bad about it.


End file.
